Friday, July 26, 2013

Men Behaving Badly

Well, haven't we had a nice full week of lewd comments, lewd texts, lewd pics, lewd behavior, lewd men? Although, in the case of Anthony Weiner who is running for NY mayor and Bob Filner, the mayor of San Diego, lewd is a rather tame word for their blatant, offensive crimes against women and civility.

They're not the only ones. I would recommend staying off of Huffington Post during your lunch hour seeing as how they had a story this week about employees of Subway putting their penises on the bread of the sandwiches they were making.

I know. I didn't even read it and still it caused my to lose my appetite.

When I was 19, my friend and I used to go biking a couple of times a week out to the forest preserve and back. While stopped at a traffic light some guy hung out the passenger side window and smacked me on the backside so hard I nearly fell off my bike. The car full of boys drove off laughing. Since my friend was ahead of me she didn't know what had happened to me until we stopped.

I still remember the sting - physically and emotionally.

I have never been on the receiving end of anything so physically blatant since then, but there have been comments and touches that have made me uncomfortable and that I have passed off as "you know how he is".........

...........the message being that it is okay even when it is not.

Ever.

Nobody said it better this week than Helen Mirren.

"If I’d had children and had a girl, the first words I would have taught
her would have been “f*** off” because we weren’t brought up ever to say
that to anyone, were we? And it’s quite valuable to have the courage
and the confidence to say, “No, f*** off, leave me alone, thank you
very much.” You see, I couldn’t help saying “Thank you very much,” I
just couldn’t help myself."

I used to work with this darling, young girl who waited on a customer once and who became so enamored with her that he frequently came in asking for her. The manager devised a plan to get her off the floor when he came in the door because she was so freaked out by him. Obviously, we weren't able to tell him to f*** off, but in hindsight I have to wonder why any business has to be polite to a predator and why we women are so hesitant to say the two words that will change the game.

Way back in the '50's I was newly married and worked at a store where employees came around my counter to get to the freight room (catalog department.) One guy came by and put his arm innocently(?) around my waist and wiggled his fingers on my rib cage. He got a boney elbow dug into his ample belly - swiftly and harshly. "What did you do that for?" he sputtered. "Don't touch me." And he never did.